Remembering my mission

I found a web site for the Japan Sendai mission through Facebook yesterday. I have already been able to contact Elder Wasden and Elder MacKay. Elder Cornwall is the only other person from my mission that I have had contact with since I got home 16 years ago. Wow how time flies! It was good to sit an reminisce a little bit about my mission and about some of the Friends that I made in Japan that I have not seen or heard from since I left. The photo is one that a ward member gave me before I left. He was in Sendai Japan in 1954 while in the service, he took this picture at a Sunday School class while he was there. When I got to Japan I showed it to my mission president, President Fukuda who grew up in Sendai. When he looked at it he exclaimed "I am in this picture!" He is sitting 5 rows back on the right side of the aisle, all you can see is his face. I find it fascinating that a picture originating in Sendai Japan, can make it to the other side of the earth to a small town in southern Utah, and then make it back to Sendai 36 years later at a time when someone in the picture is serving as mission president. It just goes to prove that this is truly a small world we live on!

The other drawing was done by a member in Sendai, he did these little cards for all of the missionaries, I wish I could remember his name! Mine is a picture of me in a gold mine, part of my jikoshokai (meaning self introduction, we used a small book with pictures to introduce ourselves) shows pictures of the gold mine that I worked in before I left on my mission. At the top of the card it says hen gaijin meaning weird foreigner, below that it it explains that I worked in a gold mine. These are just a couple of fun things from my mission that I thought of after finding the web site.

I hope to be able to find more of the Elders and Sister that I served with in Japan. We get so busy in our lives that sometimes we don't stop for the little things. Friendships should never be considered a little thing, unfortunately we get so busy with our lives that we neglect the little things. This can be true in our everyday relationships with our family and closest Friends as well as people that we knew a long time ago. We should stop and smell the roses from time to time.